


Skin

by Greythwaite



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Curses, Drug Use, Minor Character Death, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:02:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greythwaite/pseuds/Greythwaite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is cursed. This isn't a fairy tale, this isn't fiction. This cannot end happily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sherlock Secret Santa, for Mcfoily.

When Sherlock Holmes was six years old, he killed his mother. Not on purpose, of course. He never would have hurt her on purpose. If he could have changed anything about that day, he would have. He would have stayed in the library instead of sneaking outside to climb the ancient, surly old oak tree behind the house. He would have worn his gloves and coat like he was supposed to. He never would have touched her.

But he was bored in the library, sick of sitting inside with his child's attention span and overly developed intelligence. He was keen on reaching a nest seated in the junction of two branches at the tree's top, to maybe collect an egg, if one was to be found. His coat and gloves lay forgotten in the library, unwanted because of the heat of the brilliant summer day, despite his parents' insistence that he wear them always. Plus, he wasn't planning on the violent tumble he took from the upper boughs of the tree when a gnarled branch snapped beneath his feet.

Upon his initial landing, the shock kept him from realizing the pain. He lay quietly on his broken arm, mind still catching up after the surreality of his fall. Then he could feel the poke of jagged bone, he saw the uneven bend to his limb, and screamed.

“ _Sherlock_!” His mother was the first out of the house, sprinting across the yard to protect her child. “Sherlock, don’t move, darling, just relax –“

Sherlock lay motionless, whimpering as he tried not to shift his arm, but when she knelt beside him, he reached for her. Distantly, over the rushing in his head, he could hear his father shouting. 

“Amelia, _stop_! Leave him, don’t touch him –“

His mother scooped his small body up carelessly, holding him close, and he buried his face in her warm neck with a sob.

Her entire body shuddered, and her son shuddered with her. It startled Sherlock, the first time he had ever died with someone, and he clung to her tightly as her heart stopped. Then she went soft and limp beneath him. His father was still shouting, and strong hands gripped him beneath his arms, hauling him away from her. Sherlock was set aside, gasping helplessly as his father crouched over his mother's prostrate form. Her dark mane of hair tangled around her, and her eyes stared blankly skyward.

“Amelia! What have you done, Sherlock, _what have you done_ –“

“Daddy…”

“You did this to her, you _took_ her – “

Mycroft came out, fully clothed, and picked his little brother off the grass, half-dragging the boy into the house and away from their parents. As the only capable one remaining, he called 999. Sherlock was driven to the hospital, lying pale and exhausted in the back of his father’s car, while his mother was driven in an ambulance, safely ensconced in a black body bag. 

It was a day of firsts, this being his first time in a hospital, particularly in A & E. In stunned silence since feeling his mother die, he was now frantic again, in terror as the overwhelming sensations of pain and death washed over him from the many people in the building both dying and in pain. His father gave every doctor and nurse who touched him explicit instructions to keep their arms covered and their gloves on, no matter what. He barely noticed his arm being reset, mind gone as he struggled to block out the sheer weight of the hospital.

He remembers the shock to their relatives and family friends, that so lively and healthy a woman should die so suddenly of no apparent cause. He remembers the tears and his father’s rage, and standing before a hole in the ground with Mycroft’s hand on his shoulder, watching as his mother’s casket was lowered into it. For months, he hadn’t spoken, had barely left his room, had taken his father’s verbal abuse unflinchingly, knowing the man wouldn’t touch him and knowing he deserved it. He was locked inside his own mind after his double trauma, experiencing his mother’s death so intimately, then being thrust into an environment full of people dying in various ways, feeling each one pressing inside him.

\--

At school, he was the strange boy who always wore long sleeves and gloves and a scarf, even in the summer, and who knew everything, to the point of making his peers angry and envious. They bullied and mocked him, calling him know-it-all, teacher’s pet, cheater, freak. They had no clue how accurate the last one was, until the day Ian McCall decided to make the bullying physical and hit Sherlock squarely in the face. This was the second time he died.

He watched as the other boy’s lips went blue, his eyelids quivering, grubby hands twitching. Ian stayed upright for all of three seconds before collapsing to the ground, turning small and fragile as his last breath rattled out. By the time a teacher reached them, Sherlock was just getting his breath back, tears mixing with the blood on his nose, and there was nothing that could be done for Ian. 

He wasn’t blamed. It was partly luck, he imagined, and partly his father’s work. Ian’s death was accounted to a previously unnoticed heart defect. Sherlock was forced to change schools anyway.

\--

There was something wrong about the death of Carl Powers. 

The police, blind as they were, saw nothing but a boy who suffered a fit and drowned in a swimming pool. Sherlock could feel the violence of his death, the creeping of something sinister through his body (a poison, as Sherlock’s extra senses alerted him), and though he couldn’t bring that to the attention of the authorities, he could at least point out a missing pair of shoes. 

Honestly, what sensible boy would go out in public without his _shoes_? True, he was swimming, but there was plenty of walking to be done between where he was and where he came from. Thus, shoes. But they were gone. They surely didn’t walk off without their owner, so they were taken. Who had taken them? It was important, he told the police, it was key that they find his shoes.

He was blown off, treated like a stupid child, and told to go back to his parents. He gave one of the officers quite a shock of guilt by telling the man that his mother was dead, but he eventually obeyed. There was no getting through to such thick-headed, moronic creatures. By the time Mycroft found him, sulking and shaking by the lockers, he had developed a very firm opinion on the intelligence, or lack thereof, of other people, and a general disdain toward authority figures.

\--

Since his mother’s death, Sherlock’s father had liked to say that his younger son had been touched by death, and that death had left something behind. He was tainted, damaged, something wicked. He only voiced these thoughts in front of his children, of course. Mycroft had long given up attempting to stop the streams of abuse his father directed at his little brother, having grown tired of having the words turned on him, and having seen that Sherlock blocked out the attacks, ignoring them, or so Mycroft thought. By the time he realised the untruth of this, it was too late.

Sherlock continued doing his best to hide his true reactions from both his father and brother. He knew the things his father said were lies, meant only to wound him. He understood the nature of his condition. His mother had explained it to him, time and time again, once he was old enough to understand, which was considerably before most other children would have been able to comprehend it. Yes, he was touched by death, but it took the form of a curse, wrought on him in his infancy by some cruel, cold man his father had had the misfortune to cross. She never told him the name of the man, and neither did his father, too resentful to speak to his son about such matters. 

He did know, however, of the method to beak his curse. Thinking back on it made his lip curl in misery and disgust. The utter simplicity, the hackneyed nature of it, was nearly agonising in combination with its double edge. It was this that he brought up with Mycroft, when his brother returned home for Christmas.

“A kiss, Mycroft,” he murmured to his brother in the comfort of the elder’s bedroom. The other lifted his head in brief puzzlement, then lowered it, knowing. “That’s all it would take.”

“Don’t oversimplify it. You know it isn’t quite that straightforward.” Mycroft turned a page in his book, sliding it along the others to create a soothing rustle. “If it was, I’m sure Mummy would have willingly given you that kiss herself.”

“I don’t see how it’s so hard. Find someone, get her to fall in love with me, give her a kiss…” 

“Too easy, Sherlock,” his brother replied. “Stop being deliberately obtuse. You realise it isn’t about them loving you.”

Sherlock was silent, picking at the threads on his brother’s blanket.

“You have to give them a piece of yourself, too, little brother. That’s how love works.”

“Then it isn’t going to work.” The younger stretched out on his back, staring at the ceiling. “No one is interesting enough. People are all so dull. They don’t understand, they can’t keep up, and they just get angry and jealous when they fail. And no one could ever love me.”

“Then don’t try to break it. Let it go, Sherlock. Accept that this is the way things are. Your psyche will be in better shape for it, I should think. Love hurts. All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage.” 

“I’m doomed,” Sherlock purred. He let the silence hang as his mind flicked through possibilities, alterate scenarios. Keep the curse, break the curse. What would life be like without the smell of death, the feel of his heart stopping when he touches another human being, the feel of it skipping when animals die at his touch. To actually touch another person, no clothes, no gloves, no barriers. He hadn’t felt any skin but his own in some time. Would he want that one day? To touch someone else freely, without fear of killing them? “How would I even know if it was… love?”

The silence following his question wasn’t just continuation. It was hesitation.

“You won’t want to kiss her,” Mycroft said heavily.

\--

Her name was Violet Hunter. She was shockingly astute, game enough to keep up or admit when she couldn’t, and strong enough to keep him grounded when it became necessary. She was adventurous. Sweet. She was the most astonishing friendship he had ever made, not only for actually choosing to spend time with him and listen to his perpetual spillage of information and deal with his peculiarities, but because she was female. It was mind-blowing.

It was with Violet that he became more formally introduced to London. She had grown up in Islington, would have stayed there, if it hadn’t been for her parents’ uncordial divorce and her subsequent relocation to Sussex to live with her father. Like Sherlock, she couldn’t have been unhappier there.

They met over one summer at the Hastings Library. He chucked a book at her, she caught it, asked what the hell he was thinking, and sat down beside him, helping him search for information on toxins. Before he knew it, they were both bent over a book, looking at an entry on Colchicum autumnale and its resulting toxin, and suddenly a curious case of poisoning, which he’d originally thought to be arsenic, was all making sense, and he was off without another thought, leaving the girl behind, and it was only once he’d slowed down, having trudged through half a dozen gardens, that he realised he’d left her behind. When he thought harder, he realised he didn’t even know her name.

The disappointment set in, and even though he successfully sent enough anonymous evidence the police’s way, he couldn’t help thinking of the surprising kindness of the girl in the library. He might not have noticed if she hadn’t been so unusually kind, being rather more used to indifference and hostility himself.

By chance, he saw her again on the street, and this time, he paid attention. Thick, burnished auburn hair, braided artlessly. Tired, bloodshot hazel eyes. She had fine hands, slim and long-fingered. Pencil smear on the side of her left palm (left-handed), mostly washed-off ink on the centre (a name, a phone number, a boy, one she hadn’t thought enough of to keep his number). 

“I never thanked you,” he spoke from behind her, and the girl nearly jumped out of her skin, braid almost slapping Sherlock in the face as she whirled to face him. He stepped back smoothly, lips twitching into a faint, stiff smile. He wondered how obvious it was that he wasn’t accustomed to the expression. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Not a problem,” she replied, smirking in response. “You seemed in an awful hurry before.”

“Yes, well. I had a poisoner to set up,” he explained gracelessly.

Fingernails unchewed, but the skin around them ragged (anxious). She kept touching her neck, tracing a faint ligature, a chain and a pendant that weren’t there. The hair of three cats (Siamese, tortoiseshell, standard tabby) and two dogs (Labradors) clung to her clothes. The knee of her jeans had been torn (not worn through, the edges of the thread still rough, spots of rust suggest torn on metal). She was not supposed to be here.

“Beg pardon?”

“What I mean is, there was a killer running loose, the police were too inept to catch him, and I did them the favour of nudging them in his direction.”

“That’s what the flowers were about?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “That toxin.”

“Precisely.” His smile widened. 

“Well. Good on you, mate. Very crafty. I feel like a bit of a superhero now.”

A small huff of amusement escaped Sherlock, and he hastily covered by clearing his throat.

“What’s your name?” he asked, blunt and straightforward. Only once it was out did it sound awkward, and he began making miniscule adjustments to his mindset, posture, predicted variants of their conversation.

“I don’t generally give it to strangers,” she sighed, scanning the street briefly. “But I can make an exception. I’m Violet. Hunter. Violet Hunter.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” he introduced himself, proffering a gloved hand. Violet took it firmly.

“Any reason you’re outside in the middle of summer dressed like you’re attending a funeral, Mister Holmes?”

For only a moment, Sherlock’s mind stalled with tension, but he shook it off. “I like the air of mystery.”

“I feel hot just looking at you,” she deadpanned, and he shrugged.

“Allow me my idiosyncrasies.”

“I’d allow you a hell of a lot more,” she muttered. Sherlock stiffened in shock, eyes widening. “Sorry, I lose my filter on occasion. Didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

“No, it’s… fine.”

“Whatever you say, Sherly.”

“Please, don’t call me Sherly. Never call me Sherly.”

“Oh, fine, you great wet blanket. Care to step out of the heat? You look like one of those shaggy black dogs, you know, the big ones, when they get left out too long.”

The young man took a deep breath, considering. “Where do you suggest?”

They wound up loitering in a café for hours. He told her of his talent for observation, providing his analysis of her clothing and inquiring after the ligature on her neck. After a moment of staring at him looking gobsmacked, her eyes sharpened and she told him she had sneaked out of the house after a fight with her father (which Sherlock could relate to), and that her father had been the one to snap her necklace, leaving the red imprint of the chain behind. He hadn’t meant it, according to Violet, but the thought hit close enough to home to leave Sherlock mildly unsettled. He told her vaguely of his own parents, avoiding the bits about curses and a dead mother and the persistent verbal abuse. They discussed schooling and all things hateful about it, including how many of England’s top public schools Sherlock had attended and been removed from. When he explained the part where all of his classmates held a general contempt for him, leaving him a loner, she took it upon herself to declare him friendless no longer. He tried, several times, to explain that he honestly didn’t mind keeping his own company, but she insisted that everyone needed friends. Even if just to talk at before running off to solve crimes.

Sherlock never removed his coat and gloves. Violet didn’t ask about it again.

It took five years for her to reassess her ideas about his odd clothing habits. He saw the curiosity developing in her once more, felt the question she was never quite willing to ask. All the time, he ignored it, knowing she would ask when she felt like it, and not wishing to prompt her to action before it was necessary. They got along swimmingly, even after moving on to university, and while he was at Cambridge and she University of London, neither slept enough, and they utilised some of the spare time on each other. She was a generally touchy person, enjoying personal contact far more than Sherlock was accustomed to, but he adjusted to the leaning, the casual brushes, the hand that would land absently on his arm when she was talking, her mind elsewhere. She liked him, in more than the platonic manner she played it off as, but he wasn’t quite certain if it was purely aesthetic or genuinely romantic. While the answer didn’t surprise him, the manner of its revelation did.

She tried to kiss him.

They sprawled side-by-side on her carpet, simply enjoying one another’s company, or so he thought, when Violet rolled suddenly, hands landing on his chest. She settled, studying him, and then leaned in as though this were a perfectly normal activity they shared together. Sherlock nearly went into cardiac arrest, catching hold of her and pushing her back with undue force.

“What was that?” he asked, eyes wide, his mind undergoing a soft reset as it struggled to catch up to what she had just attempted.

“It was going to be a kiss, Sherlock.” Violet gave him a hurt look, emulating a kicked puppy, and his brow furrowed at her. “What was that?”

“I…” His expression cooled. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“And why the hell not? Sherlock, in case you haven’t noticed, I like you. And I get the idea that the feeling is mutual.”

Her hand came at his face, reaching to caress his cheek, and he caught it in a grip that was a hair too harsh. He loosened immediately.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he repeated sharply. “Violet.”

She stared him down, hazel eyes golden in the dim light. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking you. Please, stop.”

“Why don’t you ever let me touch you?” she pushed.

“You touch me all the time.”

“I mean really touch you. Skin to skin. I’ve never seen your arms. Do you know how odd that is?” 

“Not really.”

“Don’t be obtuse,” she threw one of his own phrases back at him. “You wear long sleeves, gloves all the time, scarves, even indoors. You never go out in public with any skin showing. For all I know, there’s nothing under those clothes, they all just float around with a face on top. Why are you always dressed like that?”

“I have a skin condition,” Sherlock lied smoothly, tilting his face away as though embarrassed.

“Liar.” Violet stared him down. “The truth, Sherlock.”

He glared at her, sharp and resentful, before turning his eyes to the ceiling once more. 

“Sherlock?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About?”

“Whether or not to trust you.”

There was silence.

“You know, it hurt when you pushed me off like that, but I’m used to your peculiarities. I could let it go. Hearing that you don’t even trust me?” She chuckled wryly. “That really smarts.”

“It isn’t like that, and you should know that by now. You’re the closest anyone’s ever gotten.” Sherlock chewed his lip, tasting a faint ferrous burst as the skin cracked. “If I tell you, you will be the first outside of my family to know.”

“Know what?” He had piqued her insatiable curiosity. “Tell me. Please. You know I won’t go throwing your secrets around, Sherlock.”

“This is especially delicate. My entire life could be ruined.” He met her gaze. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She met his gaze with wide amber eyes. Sherlock paused, taking a few deep breaths.

“I… have a condition.” Her eyes sharpened with disbelief. “Wait, let me finish. I have a condition that… I k-ki...” She blinked at him blankly. “Not like… s-strangling or stabbing or poison. I can... with…” He felt his throat tightening, the words forced to a halt against his hyoid. He flexed his hands, trying to express the thought physically.

“I don’t get it.”

“ _Shit_. Of all the bloody things to find out –” He thumped his head back against the floor.

“Sherlock, what the hell?”

“Get a pen and paper.” Violet’s nose wrinkled. “Just do it,” he sighed, exasperated. When she obeyed, and returned to sit at his side, he continued. “Okay. This is an unexpected complication. I’m going to try dictating something to you. You are going to copy what I say. It’s possible that this will sound a bit odd at first.”

“Fine, whatever. Just get on with it, mate. I’m intrigued.” She clicked the pen urgently.

“I… can…” Sherlock struggled against the block in his throat, throwing words at it until one slipped free. “Graveyard, morgue. Funeral. Reaper!” Closer. Violet scribbled diligently. “My… My… Midas. Like Midas.”

“Er…”

“I told you it wouldn’t make much sense. I’ve never done this, so I didn’t know it would work this way.”

“Okay, but Sherlock…” She clicked the pen again. “You’re going to have to make some sense of this.”

“What was the tale of King Midas?”

“Greedy old king wishes he can turn things to gold with a touch. He touches his daughter and she turns into a statue.”

“Yes. And what does the Grim Reaper do?”

“Harvest souls.”

“Simplify it. Focus on people.”

“Kills people.”

“ _Yes_. Yes.” Sherlock sighed. “Now combine the two.”

It took a few moments for her to process.

“I can… When you touch people, they…” He gave her an urging look. “Die?”

Abruptly, Sherlock’s entire body relaxed. He took a deep breath and sighed, the sound almost a groan of relief. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s…” The pen again. Click click click.

“What?” His brow furrowed.

“Like how?

“I’m not sure exactly. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. If any… living… comes into direct contact with my skin…” He snapped his fingers. “Instantaneously.”

“Shit just… dies. When you touch it.”

“Didn’t I just say?” he said impatiently.

“Are you cursed?” she asked, head tilting. He was silent, eyes unblinking. “You _are_. How are you cursed? What happened? Did you piss off some old hag?”

“Don’t make this into some hackneyed fairy tale,” he snapped. 

“Sorry…” 

“No matter.” He rubbed his shoulders into the rug. “If you kiss me...”

“I’ll die.”

“Full stop. Your heart will cease to beat.”

“Okay. I get it. No kissing.” She tossed her writing materials aside and flopped onto her back beside him. “Isn’t true love’s kiss supposed to make curses all better, though?”

When he was silent once more, she let out a triumphant crow. 

“Oh _wow_ , that’s rich. Not to mention swiped from every Grimm story in the book, literally. Where is the originality?”

“It doesn’t need to be original. It’s designed to cause maximum misery and pain.”

“What do you me –” Violet halted midsentence, and he could hear the little cogs in her mind click into place. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Anything you touch dies.”

“Yes.”

“Anything. Meaning…”

“Even if I kiss someone, and the kiss… fixes me, presumably, that person will die. If it’s true love…”

“Oh. You poor bastard.” His eyes darted to her face in a glare. “No, I just… I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”

“On the other hand, I can continue through life, dressed for a trip to the Arctic Circle, avoid all human contact. It can be… disabling… at times, but I can avoid the things that trigger it.”

“Trigger it?”

He waved a hand. “Death and such.”

“Wow. I just… Wow. All this time, and I never would have known…” Her fingers tugged at each other. “What if it doesn’t work out quite that way? What if it’s like Beauty and the Beast, and once the curse breaks, whomever you kiss just comes back to life and it’s all fine?”

“The likelihood of that is slim to none. You’re talking about Disney, Violet. Fairy tales. Fiction. Not an actual curse in the real world.”

“But what if?”

“I suppose it would depend on whether I was willing to risk it.”

\--

He risked it.

When she pressed, when she said she loved him, his mind began to change. He began to hope. 

Sherlock had no idea what love was supposed to feel like. He never thought he would get close enough to anyone for love to even factor into the equation. Even so, there was Violet Hunter, and he definitely felt something for her. He desired her safety and happiness, he enjoyed himself when he was with her, he found her appearance aesthetically pleasing. He felt no sexual desire for her, but he reasoned that not all love was based on sexual attraction. Maybe he did love her in return.

So he kissed her. And for all of thirty seconds, it was good. He was content. 

The first and only warning he had that things had gone wrong was the sudden sensation of a fist tightening in the centre of his chest. His eyes fluttered open and his heart stopped beating, choking to a halt beneath his sternum. He jerked once, stunned, and the world whited out.

She lay motionless on the ground at his side as he sucked air desperately into lungs just coming back online. He could do nothing but stare at her corpse for several minutes, fighting to compose himself. When at last he moved, it was to find the phone and call Mycroft. One painful gasp into the receiver, and his brother assured him everything would be taken care of. 

Violet Hunter’s death was written off as a brain aneurysm. Sherlock didn’t attend the funeral. The day after she was interred, he placed a white camellia on the freshly-turned earth, and he never returned to that place. 

\--

When he met Victor Trevor, Sherlock didn’t even try. The realisation that he was physically attracted to Victor in a way he hadn’t been to Violet, or any woman, was infuriating. When he and Victor grew too close, he shut the other man down and distanced himself. They kept in touch briefly after Uni, then went their separate ways.

Alone. Being alone was the only way to protect them.

\--

The drugs were the trick. He almost couldn’t believe it took him so long to discover them. Quite an accident, really, an experiment with an unintended, unanticipated result. He stalked the streets alone at night, met a man with the goods, and thought one syringe couldn’t hurt. It more than didn’t hurt.

The first time he tried cocaine, he had felt like flying. His mind was on fire, but it didn’t burn. He was looking down on the world, seeing it all spread before him, all those little details magnified beneath his eyes. It kept the blackness at bay, kept it from invading his thoughts, but it was not enough to make him remove his covering. That made it safe. He could pretend to be normal. 

Then he discovered that he could walk through a hospital, a morgue, hell, he could walk through a crime scene, and the death couldn’t touch him. He sensed it humming angrily beyond the wall of cocaine encasing his mind, and he ignored it.

With the help of the drugs, he began bursting onto police cases, crime scenes, pointing out a thousand missed details, and yes, he was showing off, he was going to get himself arrested, but he didn’t give a shit. None of it mattered. He was doing what he did best, and keeping his brain occupied. If he managed to actually help a few people and put away a few criminals in the process, well, it was just icing, wasn’t it? 

The first of the officers to really look at him rather than being blown away, a Detective Inspector Lestrade, finally noticed the heavy and obvious drug use. Sherlock had run into the man on several occasions, and apparently, once the razzle-dazzle of his ability wore off, the Inspector began paying attention. He gripped Sherlock roughly by the arm at a crime scene, and was thrown off.

“Don’t touch me,” the young man snarled, leaping back.

“You. You’re so high you can barely see straight, you tosser…” Lestrade took him again by the upper arm, fingers wrapping around the bony limb tight enough to bruise. “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to one, get yourself in a world of trouble, and two, fuck up these investigations.”

“Fuck them up how?” Sherlock hissed. “If you mean that I can’t do better than the troupe of trained monkeys that work these crime scenes, you already know you’re wrong. And I know what I’m doing. You missed the most obvious of evidence. Look at her ankle –”

“I don’t think you get what’s going on here. What is this, heroin?” He gestured to Sherlock’s fully covered but obviously scrawny figure. “People find out any of us are getting hints about evidence from a junkie, everything we work for goes straight down the toilet. You understand?”

Sherlock yanked his arm free again. “Stop touching me.”

“Look, I don’t know what it is you need exactly, but this isn’t it. You look like shit, you smell like a wet dog that’s rolled in an ash tray, and you’re about to crash, from the look of things.” Lestrade dug a hand into one pocket and drew out a card, shoving it into Sherlock’s coat. “That’s my info. You need something, I’ll do my best to help you out, but if you want to keep on around here, something has got to change.”

“Stop trying to be a hero. You can’t do anything, and I don’t want your help.” Sherlock turned his back on the man. “You’re wasting my time.”

“Get off our crime scene. And for Christ’s sake, clean yourself up, mate.”

“I’m not your mate,” he spat, slinking off down the street. A throbbing headache was already building behind Sherlock’s eyes, the cocaine rapidly losing its effect and leaving him vulnerable to the violent strangling death of the man in the alley. By the time he reached his dingy cage of a flat, he had come down all the way, and he barely made it into the bathroom in time to vomit. 

When he woke the next day, curled on the cold floor beside the toilet, he made a decision. That night, he pushed twice the usual amount into his veins, laid back on the sofa, and waited. It was easier than he’d expected it to be, despite the rather agonising nature of the method. Once he got past the itching and the choking and the muscle spasms, it was the same thing all over again. 

Once again, he woke on the floor, only this time, he lay in a mess of his own making, and his eyes swam unerringly into focus on a pair of sharp leather shoes and the metal tip of a black umbrella. He gagged as the smell of himself huffed up his nose, then pushed himself up out of the puddle of foam and bile. 

“You overdosed,” Mycroft stated, watching him with dismay, lip curled.

“Am I to praise your supreme powers of observation?” Sherlock rasped in response, and he spat a gob of something foul-tasting into the rest on the floor.

“You attempted to kill yourself.”

“And it went about as well as every other time I’ve died.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Get out, Mycroft. If I have to look at you for much longer, I’ll be ill all over again.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Baleful eyes peered up at Mycroft through greasy dark strands. “No?”

“No. I am taking responsibility.” The elder clasped his hands neatly.

“What a shock. I don’t need your responsibility, I need you out of my flat.” Sherlock braced himself against the sofa as he heaved his filthy body off the floor. His attention sharpened as two tall, built men in black entered the room unbidden, standing in mirrors of Mycroft’s pose.

“What you supposedly need doesn’t play into this, Sherlock.” The official’s grey eyes flicked to his lackeys, and they stepped forward to take hold of his younger brother. “I’ve let your behaviour continue unchecked for too long. Just look at the state of you. You could have been great, little brother. Instead, you let your impulses and your own mind break you.”

“I am not broken,” Sherlock snarled up at him. “You could never understand. You have no idea what it’s like –”

“I don’t care. This has gone on long enough. I tire of cleaning up after your messes. This will be the last one.” Mycroft gestured to the puddle on the floor. One of the apes gripping Sherlock brought out a syringe, uncapping it with his teeth and plunging it into the bared skin of the man’s neck. “Just a mild sedative to hold you over. I’ll see you on the other side.”

\--

Rehab made everything feel like shit. There was no proper stimulation. There was nothing to imitate the effects of proper stimulation. It was brain-rotting. If he had possessed tears to cry, Sherlock would have shed them the day he walked out the doors. They would have been tears of utter joy.

The first thing he did upon return to London was call Detective Inspector Lestrade. He had spent so many hours staring at that damn card the man had given him, rubbing it beneath his thumb, that the ink had come off. The number was still drilled into his brain. 

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” he answered the phone, and Sherlock savoured the moment.

“Hello, Inspector.”

“Who is this?” He could tell the man recognised his voice. “Hello?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. You might remember me as the one who saw everything your team missed at crime scenes.”

“Jesus Christ…” Now massaging the bridge of his nose. “I wondered if I was going to hear back from you or see you in the morgue. What the hell happened to you?”

“Rehab. Are you still having difficulties with your cases?” Sherlock softened his tone, kept it smoother, less obviously disdainful.

“On occasion, yes. Why? You still want to poke around on them?”

“Of course.”

“Look. The thing about it is, you’re a civilian. You aren’t supposed to be traipsing through crime scenes –”

“I’m a consultant. Unofficial. No fees or cash exchange required. As needed basis, meaning, interesting cases only, if you please.” The last bit was tacked on for the sake of his argument. Loath as he was to admit it, this job would be necessary to his sanity. Lestrade must have picked up on it in his tone.

“You really need this, don’t you?” Sherlock didn’t deign to respond to that. “Okay. If you’re there in a consulting position, and if you can stay clean, I’ll… I’ll ring you whenever something interesting pops up.”

“You have a mobile?”

“Yeah.”

“I prefer to text. This is my number. Do you have it?”

“Yeah, hold on…” An obnoxious rustling sound, a curse as the handset slipped and the clatter as it hit the desk. “Okay. Soon as I find something, I’ll let you know.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“Thanks, I guess. And… congrats on the sobriety.”

Sherlock paused. “Thank you. Good day, Inspector.” He ended the call before the man could respond in kind and began reacquainting himself with his city.


End file.
